The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VII. Wesleyan’s Spurrier-Rejects Platonic Soul Separation

Brief note must be taken of theologian WILLIAM A. SPURRIER, ⁶⁰ of the Wesleyan University, in Connecticut. He likewise rejects both Platonic immortality, with its dualistic separation of body and soul, the soul being freed from the body at death; and the Hindu concept as well, that of the soul as fading out at death and being reabsorbed into the Universal Soul. According to Scripture, man is, instead, a unitary organism. Here is Dr. Spurrier’s view: CFF2 902.2

“Christianity does not believe in immortality in the Platonic sense of the word. Christianity does not believe that man, after death, is raised up and absorbed into some divine mind. We do not believe that the body and soul are two absolutely distinct entities which are separated at death. Immortality in much of Greek philosophy usually means that the soul or mind is thus freed from the body and is then united with the divine soul or mind of the universe. Immortality, for Plotinus, for example, means absorption into the divine mind or, for Plato, man achieves the role of a thinking spectator above and beyond the earthly life.” ⁶¹ CFF2 902.3

Such, Spurrier points out, is the “basic difference” between the Platonic and Christian views. Neither does Christianity accord with the Oriental concept of reabsorption, and becoming “lost in immortality, even lost in God.” Biblical eternal life definitely retains “the individual, unique personality.” ⁶² Here, then, is another Episcopalian scholar thinking along similar lines with a host of others. CFF2 902.4